Meet Mr. and Mrs. Swan

My fieldwork season is coming to its stressful end - a new Watery Wednesday coming up, and I haven't even managed to visit last weeks entries...
I'm spending many hours in the river each day, and then some in the lab. Tomorrow I will finish the experiment in a long mad day of sampling, freezing and starting some analysis. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to a last encounter with Mr and Mrs Swan and their eight rather grown-up cygnets. I've met them every day on their way to their preening grounds - annoyingly just upstream of my experiment. I hate peeling their feathers away from my flumes each day. Needless to say that they hate me, too. You can probably tell from Mrs Swans suspicious ogle in my direction:



Just after taking this snap of them I felt very much like hastening towards the bank...I'm not really up to facing 10 hissing swans towering over me whilst I'm submerged up to my middle in the river.

Back to Watery Wednesday, hosted by 2Sweet'n'Saxy.

skywatch

The sky as seen in the river a little while ago:



Happy Skywatch Friday!

new river

I have moved my work to a lovely, clean river near Newbury. My current experiment is keeping me busy and so I have no time for anything (sadly including visiting all your blogs). Working amongst the trouts, graylings and ranunculae (or is it Ranunculaceae ?), though, is a real treat. Yesterday we even saw a swimming snake! I didn't manage to snap it...so all I can show you is a little ranunculus blossom poking out of the water:



Back to Watery Wednesday hosted by 2SweetnSaxy.

bloom

Some 14 days ago there was a heat wave (as in: a few days when the temperatures rose above 22 C) and so we had growth of luxurious proportions in our experimental flumes:



These filamentous algae are not the same as the smaller planctonic algae which cause the dreaded toxic algal blooms. They are just the chaps nobody wants to tread on when getting into a fresh water lake because they're dreadfully slimy. They are a food source and only take over if there are too many nutrients in the water - and too much sun :)

Visit 2SweetnSaxy for a good dose of Watery Wednesday.

world of biofilms

If you've left a comment in recent days and haven't yet got a return visit from me, the reason for it is that I've just got too much work...
That's also the reason why you'll get to see a peculiar photo today. It's a work photo:



What you see here is a busy underwater biofilm producing lots of bubbles in the process of digesting all sorts of stuff that has been washed or has fallen into the river.

Happy watery wednesday to you all.

Preparations

As H1N1 (the current Swine Flu variant) starts it's journey through the UK we're hectically trying to get ready in time to measure its effect on sewage effluents and rivers:



This might not look like science to you...but the hi-tech part starts in the lab :)

For less snap-shotty water photos visit Watery Wednesdays, hosted by 2SweetnSaxy.

Springwatch

It's coming - hooray! Here are it's first traces at the River Kennet near Marlborough: